the act of taking revenge
(Revenge means to harm someone to get them back for something harmful that they have done.)

It was even told me that Fernand, especially, was terrible in his vengeance.

But when Napoleon returned to Paris, Danglars’ heart failed him, and he lived in constant fear of Dantes’ return on a mission of vengeance.

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He told himself that it was the enmity of man, and not the vengeance of heaven, that had thus plunged him into the deepest misery.

Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart—that of vengeance.

This idea was one of vengeance to me, and I tasted it slowly in the night of my dungeon and the despair of my captivity.

He renewed against Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort the oath of implacable vengeance he had made in his dungeon.

He then took an oath of bitter vengeance over the dead body of the one and the tomb of the other.

Hatred is blind, rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.

On the morning of the departure from the forest of Frosinone he had followed Carlini in the darkness, and heard this oath of vengeance, and, like a wise man, anticipated it.

But are there not a thousand tortures by which a man may be made to suffer without society taking the least cognizance of them, or offering him even the insufficient means of vengeance, of which we have just spoken?

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The injured husband goes through all the emotions of jealousy, until conviction seizes on his mind, and then, in a frenzy of rage and indignation, he awakens his guilty wife to tell her that he knows her guilt and to threaten her with his vengeance.

"But, monsieur, it is very natural," returned Bertuccio, "since it was in this house that my vengeance was accomplished."

You went to sleep full of thoughts of vengeance; they weighed heavily upon your stomach; you had the nightmare—that’s all.

"Do not think so, Bertuccio," replied the count; "for the wicked are not so easily disposed of, for God seems to have them under his special watch-care to make of them instruments of his vengeance."

If we are to judge by all the vengeance that the followers of the usurper exercised on the partisans of the king, when, in their turn, they were in power, your brother would be to-day, in all probability, condemned to death.

"My God!" he exclaimed, "thy vengeance is sometimes delayed, but only that it may fall the more effectually."

You have spared me, yet of all those who have fallen under your vengeance I was the most guilty.

Having reached the summit of his vengeance by a long and tortuous path, he saw an abyss of doubt yawning before him.

Pale, and sweetly smiling, she looked like an angel of mercy conjuring the angel of vengeance.

Monte Cristo became pale at this horrible sight; he felt that he had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could no longer say, "God is for and with me."

Mercedes opened the door of the study and had disappeared before he had recovered from the painful and profound revery into which his thwarted vengeance had plunged him.

Oh, yes; certainly a speedy, violent death would be a fine means of deceiving these remorseless enemies, who appeared to pursue him with such incomprehensible vengeance.

A man who had sworn vengeance against my father, and had long watched his opportunity to kill him, had introduced himself that night into the garden in which my father buried me.

I have during ten years considered myself the agent of thy vengeance, and other wretches, like Morcerf, Danglars, Villefort, even Morcerf himself, must not imagine that chance has freed them from their enemy.

There are as many elixirs of every kind as there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral nature of humanity; and I will say further—the art of these chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or desires for vengeance.

Only, during the respite the absence of his rival afforded him, he reflected, partly on the means of deceiving Mercedes as to the cause of his absence, partly on plans of emigration and abduction, as from time to time he sat sad and motionless on the summit of Cape Pharo, at the spot from whence Marseilles and the Catalans are visible, watching for the apparition of a young and handsome man, who was for him also the messenger of vengeance.

You do not know that every day of those fourteen years I renewed the vow of vengeance which I had made the first day; and yet I was not aware that you had married Fernand, my calumniator, and that my father had died of hunger!

"You have guessed rightly, madame," replied Monte Cristo, smiling; "in a week I shall have left this country, where so many persons who merit the vengeance of heaven lived happily, while my father perished of hunger and grief."

I let him place the box in the hole he had made, then, while he stamped with his feet to remove all traces of his occupation, I rushed on him and plunged my knife into his breast, exclaiming,—’I am Giovanni Bertuccio; thy death for my brother’s; thy treasure for his widow; thou seest that my vengeance is more complete than I had hoped.’

…future happiness of him whom Faria really loved as a son, it had doubled its value in his eyes, and every day he expatiated on the amount, explaining to Dantes all the good which, with thirteen or fourteen millions of francs, a man could do in these days to his friends; and then Dantes’ countenance became gloomy, for the oath of vengeance he had taken recurred to his memory, and he reflected how much ill, in these times, a man with thirteen or fourteen millions could do to his enemies.

My first duty, directly I had succeeded in recalling the babe to life, was to restore it to its mother; but, in order to do so, I must have made close and careful inquiry, which would, in all probability, have led to my own apprehension; and I clung to life, partly on my sister’s account, and partly from that feeling of pride inborn in our hearts of desiring to come off untouched and victorious in the execution of our vengeance.

I have been heaven’s substitute to recompense the good—now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!"

"Ah, duelling," cried the count; "a pleasant manner, upon my soul, of arriving at your end when that end is vengeance!

"Ah, sir!" cried the countess, "how terrible a vengeance for a fault which fatality made me commit!

"No," he muttered, "the doubt I felt was but the commencement of forgetfulness; but here the wound reopens, and the heart again thirsts for vengeance.

There are no more uses of "vengeance" identified with this meaning in the book.

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Most Americans wanted vengeance after the 9-11 attacks.

Her evolutionary benefit theory of vengeance is supported by studies showing that a person’s desire for revenge increases when others see their mistreatment.